”Talking a little about his personal experience, he was famously born in Panama and has traveled all over the hemisphere for many years.” Fontaine said. “In fact, I saw, I guess it was last week, that his old girlfriend in Brazil has been found from his early days when he was in the Navy and was interviewed. She’s a somewhat older woman now than she was then, but it sorta speaks to the long experience he has had in the region — in the most positive terms.”

The “old girlfriend is former model Maria Gracinda Teixeira de Jesus who told a publication called O Globo that the presidential hopeful was “quite a kisser.”

”I called him John but also my darling and my sweet coconut,” she said. “He was a great kisser. I liked it so much that I bought a book to learn how to kiss myself.”

Fontaine didn’t make matters better when he tried to explain his comments.

”The only thing I was trying to convey was that his experience goes back a long way,” Fontaine said. “He was born in Panama, which illustrates a lifetime spent in Latin America. He has known a lot of people. The thing about the Brazilian girlfriend was in his first memoir, and it stuck in my brain. Look at the two candidates and contrast his extensive experience. That’s the only point I was trying to make.”

He later said it was a “bad attempt at humor.” For his part, McCain mentioned the 1957 fling his his book Faith of my Fathers. That meant a lot to Maria.

‘He was not only a good kisser, he was good at everything,” she said. “He was a great love of mine. But he left and it ended. Otherwise, I would be up there with him. Only that our lives were different, I was a model and he was a military man who traveled a lot. I’ll never forget him, and I would never have imagined that he would write a book and talk about me.”

If he wins the White House race, she says she will send a telegram congratulating him. She’ll sign it, “your great Brazilian love.”